Question on Marxology

[mauvaise foi]

Is there, in your opinion a sharp break between the works of the "early," "humanistic," "Hegelian," "critical" Marx (e.g. the 1844 manuscripts) and the works of the "mature," "scientific," "positivistic," Marx (e.g. Capital)?

[ComradeRed]

I don't think there is any "one" sharp break that Marx made between 1844 and 1864, but rather a long and slow refinement of his thoughts.

I suppose if you could get a hold of his economic manuscripts, you could see this more vividly...I wouldn't know.

You may also want to check his letters in between those two years to see his thoughts and how they evolved.

But I would be highly suspect of any "sharp break" to exist.

[JimFar]

The notion of a one sharp break in the development of Marx's thought goes back to the Soviets who didn't want to deal with Marx's earlier writings like the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Later on the French philosopher, Louis Althusser, took up this idea and gave it a new grounding in Gaston Bachelard's notion of an epistemological rupture. In his For Marx and his Reading Capital, Althusser located the timing of this epistemological rupture (between Marx's earlier alleged Feurbachian humanist ideology and his later science of history) to the mid-to-late 1840s. But critics soon pointed out that many of Marx's earlier ideas, like his notion of alienation, which Althusser had associated with Feuerbachian humanist ideology, can be found in Marx's later works like Capital. In response to these criticisms, Althusser pushed the timing of the epistemological rupture forward, so that eventually he was locating it as late as the time that Marx wrote his Critique ofthe Gotha Program.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

By the way Jim, thanks for advertising my site around the internet!

That last one (on Google) seems to be frequented by Marxists who know no logic, and who make all the ususal mistakes (whilst imagining they are being ever so modern).

[SPK]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2006, 07:46 AM
The notion of a one sharp break in the development of Marx's thought goes back to the Soviets who didn't want to deal with Marx's earlier writings like the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Later on the French philosopher, Louis Althusser, took up this idea and gave it a new grounding in Gaston Bachelard's notion of an epistemological rupture. In his For Marx and his Reading Capital, Althusser located the timing of this epistemological rupture (between Marx's earlier alleged Feurbachian humanist ideology and his later science of history) to the mid-to-late 1840s. But critics soon pointed out that many of Marx's earlier ideas, like his notion of alienation, which Althusser had associated with Feuerbachian humanist ideology, can be found in Marx's later works like Capital. In response to these criticisms, Althusser pushed the timing of the epistemological rupture forward, so that eventually he was locating it as late as the time that Marx wrote his Critique ofthe Gotha Program.
I recommend For Marx, a collection of essays, over Reading Capital, which is a single work -- it is an easier read.

When Althusser wrote these works in the sixties, he was engaged in a major struggle within the Communist Party of France (PCF) to arrest its tendencies towards reform. These tendencies culminated in the seventies in the ascendancy of Eurocommunism in the PCF and CP&#39;s throughout western Europe, i.e. the final abandonment of revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of decrepit parliamentarianism. Althusser&#39;s theory that there is a rupture and break between the early Marx and mature Marx, one which established his "mature" theories as truly scientific, should be understood in this political context. Eurocommunism and its predecessors -- which included forms of Marxist-Humanism -- had the early works of Marx, particularly the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, as their theoretical foundation. In that work, Marx put forth the idea that there was a species-being i.e., a human nature or essence, which was to labor (nice, our nature is to work <_<). These ideas were used by the proponents of Eurocommunism to legitimate and justify a politics orientated, not towards a specific class, the proletariat, but to all classes, i.e. all humanity. All "humanity" includes, of course, the bourgeoisie, and the very notion negates the necessity of class struggle. Althusser saw that these theories had problematic consequences and attempted to intervene against them -- he was ultimately proven correct in his assessment.

This is the political rationale behind Althusser&#39;s proposal that there is a break between the early and mature Marx. He wanted to remove the early, humanist Marx from the PCF canon and establish the later, scientific works -- who had abandoned this kind of humanist nonsense -- as the truly and exclusively correct works.

Althusser&#39;s "theoretical antihumanism", as he termed it, was influential in the socialist and communist movements, certainly in France. In the Anglo-American countries, it was also influential, for entirely different reasons, in the development of cultural studies, forms of postmodernism, and theories of the new social movements.

[JimFar]

SPK,

I think you basically got it right concerning the politics behind Althusser&#39;s supporting of the distinction between the young "humanist" Marx, and the mature "scientific" Marx. Humanist Marxisms of various sorts were big in France during the 1950s and 1960s among people both within and without the PCF. Sartre for instance was a big proponent of a humanist Marxism, and in such writings as Search for a Method and Critique of Dialectical Reason, he attempted to present a humanist Marxism based on a synthesis of existentialism and Marxism. Henri Lefebvre was another proponent of a humanist Marxism outside the PCF. Within the PCF, humanist Marxism became pretty much the official ideology in the years following Khrushchev&#39;s de-Stalinization speech. During the 1960s, the philosopher Roger Garaudy was a leading proponent of humanist Marxism and he was also political and intellectual rival of Althusser within the PCF.

Certainly Althusser&#39;s "theoretical anti-humanism" was influential in intellectuals circles, not only within France but also in Great Britain, Latin America and even the US. In the UK and US, Althusserian "structuralism" tended to blend with the other structuralisms that were being imported from France, including the structuralisms of Lévi-Strauss, Piaget, and Foucault (who had BTW been a student of Althusser). Other movements within Marxism were at least partially inspired by Althusserianism such as Analytical Marxism. Thus G.A. Cohen in his preface to his Karl Marx&#39;s Theory of History: A Defense , says that he had been inspired by the Althusserians to privilage the scientific Marx over the humanist Marx, and to direct his attention to Marx&#39;s later works, especially Capital, as opposed to his earlier writings like the 1844 Manuscripts. Having said all that, I am still not entirely convinced that the differences between the younger Marx and the older Marx are as radically discontinouous as Althusser and his disciples would have them.

[RevolverNo9]

Is there, in your opinion a sharp break between the works of the "early," "humanistic," "Hegelian," "critical" Marx (e.g. the 1844 manuscripts) and the works of the "mature," "scientific," "positivistic," Marx (e.g. Capital)?

No.

Marx&#39;s ideas underwent a gradual evolution - all allegations of a &#39;rupture&#39; or of Althusser&#39;s &#39;epistemological break&#39; stem from political motiviations or from crude analysis. Most importantly, Marx made the descision to dedicate all his writing and research to economic and sociological matters. (Also the &#39;Hegelian&#39; nature of the young Marx is misleading. The &#39;Critique of Hegel&#39;s Doctrine of the State&#39; begins with a tirade against the dialectic itself something &#39;dialctical materialists&#39; should take heed of...)

JimFar got it right when he said that the suppression of the early works was largely the result of the embarrasment of the Leninists, who upon their publication in the twentieth-century were forced to confront philisophical works - written by Marx himself - which undermined the official ideology of Dialectical Materialism.

One cannot deny it problematic that Marxism was being infiltrated as liberal, existentialist and even Christian thinkers began to play with ideas found in the Early Works... but I hazard that this would not have been so easy had Marxists themselves actually paid attention to these ideas, rather than leaving them for adoption by other idealogues. More to the point politics should never override our primary objective as Marxists: accurate analysis. Besides, one would be hard-pressed to find a theoretician with more bile against reform than Guy Debord, whose original and contemporary analysis relied a great deal on Marx&#39;s own ideas of alienation.

SPK:


In that work, Marx put forth the idea that there was a species-being i.e., a human nature or essence, which was to labor (nice, our nature is to work ).

I think your understanding of what Marx meant is off course. (Have you read the Manuscripts? I don&#39;t mean that agressively, I&#39;m just wondering.) Marx is not being metaphysical (as you imply). In &#39;Thesis VI&#39; of Marx&#39;s These on Feuerbach, he writes:

Essence [according to Feuerbach], therefore, can be comprehended only as &#39;genus&#39;, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.

This contrasts enormously to Marx&#39;s characterisation of &#39;species-being&#39; which describes, rather than an abstract &#39;genus&#39;, the nature of man&#39;s social-relations . Hence the entirely material results of man&#39;s estrangement from his social-relations: the alienation of the worker from his own product; the alienation of the worker from the work-process itself; the alienation of man from man.

More pertinently Althusser is plainly wrong in that &#39;alienation&#39; does reoccur as expressed in Marx&#39;s later works. What is fetishism, if not an articulation of the same idea? (And if Capital is an immature work that I think we have a serious problem on our hands&#33;) Even the term &#39;alienation&#39; itself reappears in the Grundrisse and Theories of Surplus Value. (The &#39;exchange of objectified labour as exchange value for living labour as use value, or... the relating of labour to its objective conditions... as alien property:alienation of labour. in the Grundrisse for example.)

Furthermore, it should be noted that the Manuscripts are in no two minds about the irreconilable interests of the two classes and the perpetual bad conditions that private property bring upon the working class.

Have no illusions.

[SPK]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2006, 07:26 PM
In &#39;Thesis VI&#39; of Marx&#39;s These on Feuerbach, he writes:
Essence [according to Feuerbach], therefore, can be comprehended only as &#39;genus&#39;, as an internal, dumb generality which naturally unites the many individuals.

This contrasts enormously to Marx&#39;s characterisation of &#39;species-being&#39; which describes, rather than an abstract &#39;genus&#39;, the nature of man&#39;s social-relations . Hence the entirely material results of man&#39;s estrangement from his social-relations: the alienation of the worker from his own product; the alienation of the worker from the work-process itself; the alienation of man from man.
I haven&#39;t read the Manuscripts for years. I looked at your post and asked myself if I had initially misunderstood them, when I read them the first time around. I parused the Manuscripts again and decided no, I don&#39;t think I misinterpreted them. But before I dump a bunch of quotes into this thread, please clarify your statement above and relate them specifically to the EPM.

More importantly, I think: Marxist-Humanism developed in different directions for decades following the 1956 CPSU party congress. And, as you note, it was influenced by other philosophical tendencies, such as existentialism and Christianity. Responses to it, such as Althusserianism, developed for decades as well and had impacts that went beyond the confines of the international communist movement. These things did not happen fundamentally because of a theoretical error, where people misread or misinterpreted Marx&#39;s early works (oops&#33; debates within Marxism from the mid-fifties to the late seventies were based on a big ol&#39; misunderstanding&#33; nevermind&#33;). They occurred because of concrete, material developments in other spheres: politics, economics, etc., and -- after all these years -- constitue real, actual, historical phenomena. These debates and their effects must be understood as independent, autonomous entities and can&#39;t be reduced to a simple, hagiographic question of their relation to Marx&#39;s original works.

I recently finished a collection of Althusser&#39;s later essays and interviews -- Philosophy of the Encounter. At one point, Althusser says explicitly that much of his reading of Marx was not actually present in Marx&#39;s writings themselves. This, to my mind, does not invalidate or negate what he was trying to do, in terms of his political / theoretical interventions within the PCF and communist movements as a whole.

[mauvaise foi]

Originally posted by [email protected] 2 2006, 12:26 AM
(Also the &#39;Hegelian&#39; nature of the young Marx is misleading. The &#39;Critique of Hegel&#39;s Doctrine of the State&#39; begins with a tirade against the dialectic itself something &#39;dialctical materialists&#39; should take heed of...)
I agree that there is no discontinuity between the "early" and "late" Marx. Every attempt to pick a specific work where that "epistemological break" occured has failed (Lenin picked the Poverty of Philosophy and Althusser picked the German Ideology both of which make extensive use of all the old Hegelian-Feuerbachian terminology). However, I don&#39;t think its possible to deny the influence of Hegel on the early Marx. After all, where does the term "alienation" come from if not from Hegel?

[gilhyle]

There is a strong perception on Marx&#39;s part in the GI of having broken with earlier positions. I think the error of Althussers approach is to schematically impose Bachelard&#39;s idea from his philosophy of science of a break - a concept not unlike Kuhn&#39;s paradigm shift.

I have found that the best way to see this is to read the early works as containing conventional philosophical and political economic concpets which Marx came to see as algebraic.

In time - beginning with the work on Proudhon - he came to insist on conducting a critique of dominant concepts to unpack them and that meant that much of his previous use of those kinds of concepts became redundant as he reinvented such concepts within his own critique.

However, that said, I do think ALthusser was on to something. I would argue that there was critical change around this period at two levels:

1. Marx ceased to believe that the working class is the servant of humanity in usshering in a better future and came to believe that intellectuals must make themselves servants of the working class cause, without restraint and leave subsequent history to itself, and

2. Marx ceased to attempt to construct his ideas as a philosophically coherent system and came to see his writings as articulations of partial ideas that served a class purpose. In that way he made a transition from philosophy to a socialist equivalent of theology.

There is a very good book on the early writings by Daniel Brudney (Marx&#39;s Attempt to Leave Philosophy) which I think is ultimately misconceived but which shows the complexity and shifting perspective of the 1843-44 writings.

[LoneRed]

I would agree with ComradeRed, in that its not a change, but more of a development of Marx&#39;s thought, in that one doesnt go against the other, but instead in his life he focused on different aspects at different times

The Manuscripts are great reading btw

[Hit The North]

2. Marx ceased to attempt to construct his ideas as a philosophically coherent system and came to see his writings as articulations of partial ideas that served a class purpose. In that way he made a transition from philosophy to a socialist equivalent of theology.

That&#39;s an interesting claim. But I need you to elaborate on what you mean by a "socialist equivilant of theology", given that his later work is more empirical and scientific than his earlier philosophical work.

[LoneRed]

I Am also interested by what you mean by socialist equivalent of Theology, If he, as you say departed from a more philosophical system of ideas,to a class based one, then how would that get into the realm of theology, as that is more philosophical

[JimFar]

gilhyle wrote:


Marx ceased to attempt to construct his ideas as a philosophically coherent system and came to see his writings as articulations of partial ideas that served a class purpose. In that way he made a transition from philosophy to a socialist equivalent of theology.

I am not sure that I understand what gilhyle is driving at here. I would think that if anything, the opposite is the case. As Marx matured, his work grew more and more empirical and scientific. That&#39;s apparent if one compares say the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 with a later work like Capital. While I don&#39;t buy into the Althusserian idea that there was an epistemological rupture which separates Marx&#39;s earlier work from his later work, such that the earlier stuff is reflective of a Feuerbachian humanist ideology, whereas the later stuff is said to be "scientific," nevertheless, there is a clear tendency in Marx&#39;s work to become more and more empirical and concrete, and less and less abstract and oriented towards speculative philosophy.

Perhaps, gilhyle is referrring to the genesis of "dialectical materialism," which does have the characteristics of a "socialist equivalent of theology," but in that case, Engels would seem to be more the culprit here than Marx. And Engels&#39; successors, especially Plekhanov, would seem to be even more the blame here, since they developed some tenatively speculative ideas from Engels into a complete system that was supposed to provide a philosophical basis for Marxism.

[gilhyle]

THosma Aquinas had the idea that the role of theology was to corale and narrow down to a minimum the aspects of the concept of God that had to be understood to be a mystery. He beleved that the concept was necessarily a mystery, but that the temptation to say in response to all theological challenges that its all just a mystery should be avoided and that the mystery could be narrowed down to some quite specific points.

I tend to think a bit by analogy with this. Pre-1845, Marx tried to articulate the perspective of what he called the &#39;philosophical communists&#39; in the GI. This was a conventional philosophical system-building exercise which claimed equal truth value for all persons engaged in rational debate.

In the GI, he begins to use a form of argument based on recognising the irreconcilable differences between the advocates of the working class and the disinterested observer or the person embroiled in the dominant ideology. That form of argument is simply to say - &#39;I dont agree with you, you represent the views of a falling class, I represent the views of a rising class...our differences are insurmountable, but history is with me.&#39;

From then on that refusal to engage in the debates of the dominant ideology (the refusal to operate within the confines of the emerging academic system) went along side a relentless pursuit of &#39;critique&#39;. The purpose of this practice of critque was to unpack illusion and arm the rising class with ideas they could use.

Its purpose was no longer to persuade every reasonable person. Nor was its purpose to illuminate to the reasonable person the moral basis for being a communist - all that was left aside from 1845 on.

In that sense Marx&#39;s project was ANALOGOUS to Aquinas&#39;, though with a different object - not religion but revolutionary politics.

Marx was not entirely out of time in this regard, indeed someone like Wittgenstein can be seen as having an analogous project with a different focus again and just about all modern philosophy apparently rejects &#39;foundationalism&#39;, but the issue is for what alternative the various different movements rejected it.

THis final observation does, however, allow what I have said to be criticised in one respect - it is no longer true (as it was in the 1840s) that philosophy was committed to the search for foundations, so Marx was not involved in as radical a break with philosophy as I might be suggesting.

This criticism would be correct, except tha the heart of what I am suggesting is that Marx&#39;s work was no longer designed to be persuasive to a hypothetical rational, discursive individual, rather than that he left philosophy. It was designed to be persuasive to and informative to the critical communist.

[RevolverNo9]

SPK


I haven&#39;t read the Manuscripts for years. I looked at your post and asked myself if I had initially misunderstood them, when I read them the first time around. I parused the Manuscripts again and decided no, I don&#39;t think I misinterpreted them. But before I dump a bunch of quotes into this thread, please clarify your statement above and relate them specifically to the EPM.

Sorry for taking my time to reply&#33; Anyway, I&#39;ll attempt to explain my position more clearly.

The Bolshevik and Althusserian claim is that Marx&#39;s exposition of menschliches Wesen constitutes an abstract essence, one that has no place in materialist analysis (not that that ever stopped the former from playing games with Hegel and Plekhanov). Yet I argue that Marx did nothing of the sort since his conception of menschliches Wesen (I use the German since it avoids the linguistic confusions thrown up by an English translation) is in actual fact bound to something concrete. The term if translated into English could either be read (crudely) as &#39;man&#39;s essence&#39; (human nature), &#39;human being&#39; (as a biological definition) or the &#39;system/complex of man&#39;. Already this tends towards clarifying what Marx means by species-being. It is not an abstract that possess men, causing them to reproduce their immutable souls. It is an organic definition, applied to the complex of man&#39;s relationships.

The social-being is the aggregate of human relations. Man is concious of his own existence and senses and - furthermore - of the existence and sense of other men. He therefore knows that his &#39;labour&#39; (in the Marxian sense of a physical tangible transformation) which transforms his world and nature also transforms himself and, by extension, other men. &#39;Labour&#39; in this sense is the necessary elemet to social interaction and relations as a whole. This is not abstract, since it&#39;s definition is entirely derived from the materially specific conditions of man&#39;s social relations. This being so, if a man&#39;s labour is not in fact his own autonomuos control of his own social relations, that necessary element come from without. Alienation is a tangible, and one that contrary to what Althusser would have one beleive is articulated by Marx even as his thought developed further and he left behind philisophical criticism. I repeat - is fetishism which is dealt with at length in all three volumes of Capital an immature Marxian concept? Does Capital predate the Break&#33;?

(I also fail to understand how the evident amount of socio-poltical enquiry undertaken my Mark throughout his Early Works can be overlooked and lead people to lable the young man as a mere &#39;Feuerbachain anthropologist&#39;.)


[These different interpretations] occurred because of concrete, material developments in other spheres: politics, economics, etc., and -- after all these years -- constitue real, actual, historical phenomena. These debates and their effects must be understood as independent, autonomous entities and can&#39;t be reduced to a simple, hagiographic question of their relation to Marx&#39;s original works.

It commendable that you bring this matter down to the necessary point - concrete, historical development. Of course, one could acknowledge that the meaning of Marx is as I attempt to describe, realise that - theoretical development aside - such an understanding of man&#39;s relations is carried through into his latest works and still disagree with Marx. So the issue should not be, as you rightly say, hagiographic. I assert, firstly, that the theory of alienation is a part of Marx&#39;s thought but, far more importantly, I accept this theory as part of my analysis of capitalism and history (regardless of whom said it). I accept it as valid. (Not simply because &#39;Marx said it&#39;.)


At one point, Althusser says explicitly that much of his reading of Marx was not actually present in Marx&#39;s writings themselves. This, to my mind, does not invalidate or negate what he was trying to do, in terms of his political / theoretical interventions within the PCF and communist movements as a whole.

I agree with this in the sense that we should strive to reach - theoretically and practically - those same objectives that Marx set out. As a result our conclusions should not attempt to approximate the writings of one man, of course. We must not fall into the traps of our predessors and &#39;fetishise&#39; a man of material existence, transforming our relationship with him into an ideal. We must be lively critics.

[Severian]

There&#39;s a great problem with all Marxology - which I think is on display in this thread, too. Marxology sees Marx primarily as a thinker and writer - while he saw himself primarily as a fighter and activist.

It seeks to understand Marx&#39;s ideas solely from his theoretical writing, with little or no reference to his actions. But Marx was always ready to set aside the theoretical work when major events in the class struggle demanded it.

I recently read an excellent book on this, the only one I&#39;ve ever seen that concentrates on Marx and Engels&#39; political activity, the different organizations they belonged too - attempting to do a comprehensive overview of it.

It&#39;s "Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough" by August Nimtz. (http://www.amazon.com/Marx-Engels-Contribution-Breakthrough-Contemporary/dp/0791444902/sr=1-1/qid=1159166056/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-1970365-5646305?ie=UTF8&s=books)

Anyway, if you look at their political evolution in the context of their activity - something else becomes clear. ("Their" activity because Marx and Engels always acted as a team. Another endless Marxological debate instantly resolved once you look at their political activity.)

The biggest single change in their writings comes around &#39;48. When the League of the Just approached them and invited them to join a workers&#39; organization. While many of "Marxist" ideas have their roots in the early writings of Marx and Engels - those were still the writings of armchair revolutionaries.

You can learn stuff from the early Marx - but you gotta keep his limits in mind. Lemme just mention "The Jewish Question" for an obvious example.

After they joined the League of the Just/Communist League - that was no longer the case.

Then came the experiences of the &#39;48-&#39;49 revolutions - which led them to alter a number of their ideas about the relationship between the different classes.

For example: They saw the bourgeoisie&#39;s opposition to even a democratic revolution, and put in practice the idea of an alliance of the workers, peasants, and urban petty-bourgeoisie. They concluded they&#39;d made a mistake by advocating the dissolution of the Communist League in the opening period of the revolution - because that harmed the political independence of the working class from the middle-class democrats.

They also drew new lessons from the Paris Commune, of course...but the &#39;48-49 revolution was their formative experience.

[gilhyle]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2006, 04:07 PM
Yet I argue that Marx did nothing of the sort since his conception of menschliches Wesen (I use the German since it avoids the linguistic confusions thrown up by an English translation) is in actual fact bound to something concrete. The term if translated into English could either be read (crudely) as &#39;man&#39;s essence&#39; (human nature), &#39;human being&#39; (as a biological definition) or the &#39;system/complex of man&#39;. Already this tends towards clarifying what Marx means by species-being. It is not an abstract that possess men, causing them to reproduce their immutable souls. It is an organic definition, applied to the complex of man&#39;s relationships.

The social-being is the aggregate of human relations. Man is concious of his own existence and senses and - furthermore - of the existence and sense of other men. He therefore knows that his &#39;labour&#39; (in the Marxian sense of a physical tangible transformation) which transforms his world and nature also transforms himself and, by extension, other men. &#39;Labour&#39; in this sense is the necessary elemet to social interaction and relations as a whole. This is not abstract, since it&#39;s definition is entirely derived from the materially specific conditions of man&#39;s social relations. This being so, if a man&#39;s labour is not in fact his own autonomuos control of his own social relations, that necessary element come from without. Alienation is a tangible, and one that contrary to what Althusser would have one beleive is articulated by Marx even as his thought developed further and he left behind philisophical criticism. I repeat - is fetishism which is dealt with at length in all three volumes of Capital an immature Marxian concept? Does Capital predate the Break&#33;?

(I also fail to understand how the evident amount of socio-poltical enquiry undertaken my Mark throughout his Early Works can be overlooked and lead people to lable the young man as a mere &#39;Feuerbachain anthropologist&#39;.)

......As a result our conclusions should not attempt to approximate the writings of one man, of course. We must not fall into the traps of our predessors and &#39;fetishise&#39; a man of material existence, transforming our relationship with him into an ideal. We must be lively critics.
IF the view you suggest were Marx&#39;s view, I would have many problems with it - not least its lack of class analysis and its rather obvious problem that many actual humans are not pre-occupied in any sense with the idea that their transformation of nature transforms them - nor, I think, can it be said that without having this phenomenology they can, nevertheless be understood as if they had this consciousnes.

However, that is not what I wanted to focus on by way of a post. The point I wanted to focus on is the continuity between Marx and Feuerbach on the issue of &#39;wesen&#39; - essence in translation.

Marx, at the time of the 1844 manuscripts did I think share Feuerbach&#39;s view of essence. The point can be illustrated with an example Feuerbach gives somewhere in the The Essence of Christianty where he writes that the &#39;essence&#39; of a planet in our solar system - lets say Mars involves necessarily a reference to key things outside it. The example Feuerbach gives, if memory serves, is the viiew of the SUn from Mars (or maybe its Saturn). THis is part of the essence of that planet.

This very simple idea illustrates a doctrine of &#39;external essence&#39; : a man is his relatinship to what is related to him. We see this view of essence articulated in the Theses on Feuerbach. The main tool - only one tool - of mans relationship to the world around him is his labor. Now I think it can be shown that at some points in his early writing Marx concentrates on consciousness of labor, but at other points he concentrates on labor itself.

If we take the view that man&#39;s labor is the key element of his essence, we have a doctring which transforms itself. First we recognise that labor is the key element of essence. We then seek to characterise labor. We find that to characterise labor is to characterise history - it can be done by articulating the materialist conception of history. But that only characterises the origins of current labor. It should soon be clear that to understand the origins of labor as it currently exists, we must understand the political economy of labor....hence we move on from the materialist conception of history to the critique of political economy.

But there is a third twist to the process. For now we have a conception of the origins and a conception of the nature of the current reality of labor....but we must now consider the labor of conceiving man&#39;s nature.....we must characterise that to include ourselves in the characterisation of labor. To cut a long story short, we end up situating ourselves as agents in class struggle.

Thus the doctrine alienated labor as Man&#39;s nature transforms itself into a conceptualisation of class struggle and communist militancy. One may say that it is still the same conception...but the elaboration of the idea has transformed it beyond recognition. I am still the baby born from my mother&#39;s womb, but I am unrecognisable as such except by tracing my lineage.

[hoopla]

not least its lack of class analysis and its rather obvious problem that many actual humans are not pre-occupied in any sense with the idea that their transformation of nature transforms themWhat about, all human behaviour is intentional towards developing production. Thao, seems to be implying this, but its a strange book of his, I think, so I could not be certain.

[SPK]

Originally posted by [email protected] 24 2006, 11:07 AM
menschliches Wesen (I use the German since it avoids the linguistic confusions thrown up by an English translation)
I don&#39;t know German. I&#39;m looking at the EPM -- in McLellan&#39;s Selected Writings: is menschliches Wesen translated into English as "species-being"?

[RevolverNo9]

SPK, I do not have German either so I can&#39;t account for translators&#39; choices. However, to clarify, the species-being is the Wesen (complex/essence/being) of man.

(Gilhyle, I&#39;ll consider all your comments later when I have a bit more time.)

[Lamanov]

It seems that RevolverNo9 said enough for us to conclude this subject. But here&#39;s a short text by Dunayevskaya which sheads some light upon "humanism" - with theory of alienation - as a continuing basis for his theory: Marx&#39;s Humanism Today (http://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1965/marx-humanism.htm).

[Leo]

Is there, in your opinion a sharp break between the works of the "early," "humanistic," "Hegelian," "critical" Marx (e.g. the 1844 manuscripts) and the works of the "mature," "scientific," "positivistic," Marx (e.g. Capital)?

That is a very frequently asked question, and the answer is no there isn&#39;t. The question originates from young Marx&#39;s idea of alienation and old Marx&#39;s labour theory of value, yet the direct connection in between, fethishization of the commodities which also connect young Marx with the old one is usually ignored, forgotten.